The 18th century

{NOT} The oldest lighthouse on the continent, and the first Canadian one, went into service at the French fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island in 1734. Patterned after the :fr:Phare des Baleines built off La Rochelle in 1682, the Louisbourg Light

Louisbourg Light

Louisbourg Lighthouse is a historic Canadian lighthouse at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, and is the site of the first lighthouse in Canada.-The first light:...

 was destroyed by British troops during the siege of 1758, and not rebuilt until 1842; the rubble of the original tower is still visible at the base of the current lighthouse, which dates from 1923.

Next came the Sambro Island Light in 1760. Located at the entrance to Halifax harbor, it has been upgraded over the years but remains the oldest continuously-operating lighthouse in North America, predating New Jersey's Sandy Hook Light by 4 years, and such venerable lighthouses as Virginia's Cape Henry Light, Maine's photogenic Portland Head Light

Portland Head Light

Portland Head Light is a historic lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine that sits at the entrance of the shipping channel into Casco Bay. The headlight was the first built by the United States government, and is now a part of Fort Williams Park.-History:...

, and Long Island's Montauk Point Light by three decades.

Another early lighthouse in the Maritime provinces, at Cape Roseway http://www.nslps.com/lights/lighthouse_page_01.asp?ID=67&SP=2&M=Early%20History dates from 1788 when Shelburne

Shelburne, Nova Scotia

Shelburne is a town located in southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada. It is the shire town of Shelburne County.-History:-Settlers:...

 was booming as the largest settlement of United Empire Loyalists

United Empire Loyalists

The name United Empire Loyalists is an honorific given after the fact to those American Loyalists who resettled in British North America and other British Colonies as an act of fealty to King George III after the British defeat in the American Revolutionary War and prior to the Treaty of Paris...

 on the continent. The 92 feet (28 m) octagonal masonry tower on McNutts Island, Nova Scotia

McNutts Island, Nova Scotia

McNutts Island is a community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in the Shelburne municipal district of Shelburne County.-History:The island was named after Col. Alexander McNutt, who lived here in the late 1760s.-External links:*...

 was braced with wooden timbers and had a clapboard exterior, and unfortunately was damaged beyond repair by fire after being hit by lightning in 1959.

In 1791 the first lighthouse was built at the entrance to Saint John on Partridge Island, New Brunswick

Partridge Island, New Brunswick

Partridge Island is a Canadian island located in the Bay of Fundy off the coast of New Brunswick on the west side of the mouth of the Saint John River and Saint John Harbour.The island is designated as both a national and provincial historic site...

. Six years earlier, the first immigration quarantine station in Canada had been established there. The other major quarantine station, at Grosse Ile, Quebec, was built as a hasty response to the cholera epidemic of 1832. In that same year, the original lighthouse at Partridge Island was destroyed by fire. In 1859 the second lighthouse was equipped with the first steam-powered fog whistle, an
invention of Robert Foulis. The third Partridge Island lighthouse was operational from 1880 until it was replaced by a concrete octagonal tower in 1959.

Early 19th century

Gibraltar Point Lighthouse

Gibraltar Point Lighthouse

The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is a lighthouse located on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario. Completed in 1808, it is the oldest existing lighthouse on the Great Lakes.- History :...

 was built on what is now known as the Toronto Islands

Toronto Islands

The Toronto Islands are a chain of small islands in the city of Toronto, Ontario. Comprising the only group of islands in the western part of Lake Ontario, the Toronto Islands are located just offshore from the city centre, and provide shelter for Toronto Harbour...

 in 1808. After 99 years of service it was decommissioned in 1907, but remains as the oldest existing lighthouse on the Great Lakes

Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...

, since the one built in 1804 at the mouth of the Niagara River was demolished to make room for Fort Mississauga

Fort Mississauga

Fort Mississauga National Historic Site is a fort along the shore of Lake Ontario, not far from the Niagara River in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. The fort today consists of a box–shaped brick tower and historic star–shaped earthworks—the only one in the country...

 during the War of 1812

War of 1812

The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...

. Other early lighthouses on Lake Ontario included False Ducks Island in 1828, Point Petre in 1831, Nine Mile Point in 1833, and Presqu'ile in 1840. The latter two are still standing, although Presqu'ile had its lantern removed in 1965. In that same year, False Duck was demolished and its lantern eventually became the centrepiece of Mariner's Memorial Lighthouse Park and Museum http://www.pecounty.on.ca/government/rec_parks_culture/rec_culture/museums/mariners.php near Milford ON.

Meanwhile in Lower Canada

Lower Canada

The Province of Lower Canada was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...

 (i.e. Quebec), an organisation named after the British Trinity House

Trinity House

The Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond is the official General Lighthouse Authority for England, Wales and other British territorial waters...

 was established in 1805. One of their first projects was to build a lighthouse on Ile Verte at the treacherous junction of the Saguenay and Saint Lawrence rivers. The 40 feet (12.2 m) masonry tower of 1809 vintage is the 3rd-oldest Canadian lighthouse, and served as a model for those built downstream at Pointe des Monts :fr:Pointe-des-Monts#Le phare in 1830, at Southwest Point and Heath Point (the eastern tip) on shipwreck haven Anticosti Island

Anticosti Island

Anticosti Island is an island at the outlet of the Saint Lawrence River into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, in Quebec, Canada, between 49° and 50° N., and between 61° 40' and 64° 30' W. At in size, it is the 90th largest island in the world and 20th largest island in Canada...

 in 1835, at South Pillar and Ile Bicquette :fr:Île Bicquette in 1843, and at Ile Rouge in 1848.

In 1813 the earliest lighthouse on Newfoundland was built at Fort Amherst

Fort Amherst

Fort Amherst, in Kent, England, was constructed in 1756 at the southern end of the Brompton lines of defence to protect the southeastern approaches to Chatham Dockyard and the River Medway against a French invasion. Part of it is now open to the public....

 to mark "The Narrows

The Narrows

The Narrows is the tidal strait separating the boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn in New York City. It connects the Upper New York Bay and Lower New York Bay and forms the principal channel by which the Hudson River empties into the Atlantic Ocean...

" of St. John's harbor. Cape Spear

Cape Spear

Cape Spear, located on the Avalon Peninsula near St. John's, Newfoundland, is the easternmost point in North America , excluding Greenland and the portions of Alaska west of the 180th parallel of longitude . Cape Spear is close to Blackhead, an amalgamated area of the City of St. John's, about...

 and Cape Bonavista

Cape Bonavista

Cape Bonavista is a headland located on the east coast of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.It is located at the northeastern tip of the Bonavista Peninsula, which separates Trinity Bay to the south from Bonavista Bay to the north.The nearby town of...

 were built by Britain's Trinity House in 1836 and 1843, receiving the old reflector lamp apparatus from Scotland's famous Inchkeith

Inchkeith

Inchkeith is an island in the Firth of Forth, Scotland. It is part of the council area of Fife.Inchkeith has had a colourful history as a result of its proximity to Edinburgh and strategic location for use as home for a lighthouse and for military purposes defending the Firth of Forth for attack...

 and Bell Rock

Inchcape

Inchcape or the Bell Rock is a notorious reef off the east coast of Angus, Scotland, near Dundee and Fife . Bell Rock Lighthouse, an automatic lighthouse, occupies the reef...

 lighthouses, respectively.

The shipbuilding boom in Canada's Atlantic Provinces prompted a flurry of lighthouse construction, starting in 1829 with Head Harbour :File:Lighthouse on Campobello Island.jpg on Franklin D. Roosevelt's beloved Campobello Island (New Brunswick) in the Bay of Fundy

Bay of Fundy

The Bay of Fundy is a bay on the Atlantic coast of North America, on the northeast end of the Gulf of Maine between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a small portion touching the U.S. state of Maine...

. In 1832 the original 1809 lighthouse on Brier Island

Brier Island

Brier Island is an island in the Bay of Fundy in Digby County, Nova Scotia.-Geography:The island is the western-most part of Nova Scotia and the southern end of the North Mountain ridge with Long Island lying immediately northeast; both islands constitute part of the Digby Neck...

 at the tip of Digby Neck in Nova Scotia was replaced; the current lighthouse dates from 1944. An important beacon was built in 1830 on desolate Seal Island, Nova Scotia

Seal Island, Nova Scotia

Seal Island is an island on the outermost extreme of Southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada, and is the southernmost point of land of Nova Scotia. It is located in Municipalité Argyle Municipality in Yarmouth County. It is approximately 2.7 miles long and 0.5 miles wide. It is the biggest of a group of...

, 18 miles (29 km) offshore and at the gateway to the Bay of Fundy. The timbers of its 67 feet (20.4 m) octagonal tower have proven to be amazingly durable, although the 1903-vintage lantern and its 1st-order Fresnel lens

Fresnel lens

A Fresnel lens is a type of lens originally developed by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel for lighthouses.The design allows the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the mass and volume of material that would be required by a lens of conventional design...

 were replaced (and moved to a replica lighthouse museum in Barrington Passage) in 1979. In fact the 8-sided wooden pattern was used in many subsequent Canadian lighthouses, notably in 1831 at wave-washed Gannet Rocks in the Bay of Fundy, at Port Burwell

Port Burwell, Ontario

Port Burwell is a community on the north shore of Lake Erie, in the municipality of Bayham in Elgin County, Ontario, Canada.It is situated at the mouth of Big Otter Creek.-History:...

 on Lake Erie, and in 1840 at Cape Forchu marking the entrance to Yarmouth harbor. In 1962 the original Yarmouth light was replaced by a distinctive concrete tower known locally as "the applecore".

Numerous shipwrecks led to the construction in 1839 of lighthouses at Scatari Island and at both ends of St. Paul Island, Nova Scotia

St. Paul Island, Nova Scotia

St. Paul Island is a small uninhabited island located approximately northeast of Cape North on Cape Breton Island and southwest of Cape Ray on Newfoundland; it is along the boundary between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Cabot Strait....

. The original towers were of traditional wood construction, but when the south light burned down in 1914 it was replaced by a cast-iron cylindrical tower; the north tower was replaced c. 1970.

The 60 feet (18.3 m) conical brick tower built during 1845-7 at Point Prim is the oldest lighthouse on Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...

. It was designed and built by Isaac Smith, the same eminent architect who designed Province House in Charlottetown

Charlottetown

Charlottetown is a Canadian city. It is both the largest city on and the provincial capital of Prince Edward Island, and the county seat of Queens County. Named after Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, Charlottetown was first incorporated as a town in 1855 and designated as a city in 1885...

.

Around mid-century, the use of whale or seal oil as lantern fuel was alleviated by the development of kerosene by Dr. Abraham Pineo Gesner

Abraham Pineo Gesner

Abraham Pineo Gesner was a Canadian physician and geologist who invented kerosene. Although Ignacy Łukasiewicz developed the modern kerosene lamp, starting the world's oil industry, Gesner is considered a primary founder. Gesner was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia...

.

In 1851, a 40-year old mechanism from the Isle of May

Isle of May

The Isle of May is located in the north of the outer Firth of Forth, approximately off the coast of mainland Scotland. It is 1.8 km long and less than half a kilometre wide...

 in Scotland was installed atop Newfoundland's new Cape Pine lighthouse http://www.capepine.com. The tower was designed by the firm Alexander S. Gordon using the same prefabricated cast-iron approach as Gibbs Hill Lighthouse

Gibbs Hill Lighthouse

The Gibbs Hill Lighthouse is the taller of two lighthouses on Bermuda, and the first of only a few lighthouses in the world to be made of cast-iron. This is because at that time, steel still was not able to be bent. The optic consists of a Fresnel lens from 1904 revolving on steel bearings. ...

 and other outposts of the British Empire. Subsequently, despite being unsuitable for the damp and cold winters, many cast-iron lighthouses were built in Newfoundland, including Channel-Port aux Basques in 1875, Lobster Cove Head http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/nl/grosmorne/natcul/natcul9.aspx in 1892, and the lighthouse which now guards the National Museum of Science & Technology http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/index.cfm which, after 50 years of service at Cape Race

Cape Race

Cape Race is a point of land located at the southeastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Its name is thought to come from the original Portuguese name for this cape, "Raso", or "bare"...

, was dismantled and re-erected with a new lantern at Cape North (NS) in 1906. Then in 1980, after a local outcry had kept the Seal Island lantern from being taken away, the historic lighthouse at the northern tip of Cape Breton was instead targeted for relocation to Ottawa.

In 1884, public clamour following the 1867 Queen of Swansea tragedy led to a cast-iron lighthouse being erected at the summit of Gull Island, off Newfoundland's Bay de Verde peninsula. At an elevation of 525 feet (160 m), it is the highest light on the eastern seaboard.

The Imperial Lights, 1857-60

By the mid 19th century it was apparent that the economic development of British North America was being hampered by obsolete navigational aids. Lobbying by the Admiralty and by Canadian shipping magnates such as Montreal's Hugh Allan

Hugh Allan

Sir Hugh Allan, KCMG was a Scottish-born Canadian shipping magnate, railway promoter, financier and capitalist...

 resulted in an ambitious 3-year building program, where all material and construction costs would be borne by Great Britain. The so-called "Imperial" lights were tall conical towers of brick or masonry construction where, in some cases, the granite was quarried and prepared by Scottish stonemasons, and shipped to the colony as ballast. By 1850's standards they must have seemed Imperial, i.e. built to withstand the ages.

Four of these towers were built along the approaches to the Saint Lawrence: at :fr:Cap-des-Rosiers on the Gaspe peninsula; in the Strait of Belle Isle; at Pointe Amour near L'Anse Amour on the Labrador coast; and at West Point on Anticosti Island. At 112 feet (34 m), the latter rivalled Cap des Rosiers as the tallest lighthouse in Canada until its replacement by an airport-type beacon and demolition in 1967.

Six Imperial Towers

Imperial Towers

The Imperial Towers were six of the earliest lighthouses built on Lake Huron by the Canadian government. The designation Imperial is not certain, but historians speculate that because the towers were public construction built under United Kingdom authority, the name would assure funding from the...

 were built on Lake Huron, at Point Clark, and on islands named Chantry, Nottawasaga, Christian, Griffith, and Cove. Construction of these limestone towers was entrusted to John Brown (1808–76). They were all 80 feet (24.4 m) tall, the exception being Christian Island, a 55 feet (16.8 m) tower comparable to Brown's 1858 lighthouse at Burlington.

Construction of the 60 feet (18.3 m) wooden lighthouse built on a caisson offshore from Point Pelee in Lake Erie was also undertaken in 1859; it was replaced in 1902 by a lighthouse built of steel plates, which can be seen today at Lakeview Park in Windsor. The Fleet Street Lighthouse

Fleet Street Lighthouse

The Queen's Wharf Lighthouse is located at Fleet Street just east of the Princes' Gates at the Exhibition Place Grounds in Toronto. The octagonal building was originally part of a pair of lighthouses built in 1861 at Queen's Wharf, replacing an earlier lighthouse originally built in 1838...

 in Toronto harbour was built in the 1860s and in 1913 was moved to the corner of Lakeshore Drive and Fleet Street, where it can be seen today. The recently restored lighthouse at Brandy Pot Island near Riviere du Loup (PQ) dates from 1862, the same year a wooden lighthouse was built on Bellechasse Island.

Offshore from Vancouver Island on Canada's Pacific coast, the Imperial lighthouses

Imperial Lighthouse Service

The Imperial Lighthouse Service was the official General Lighthouse Authority for the British Empire. This was with the exception of England, Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, which were under the authority of Trinity House...

 at Race Rocks and what is now Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site

Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site

Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site in Colwood, British Columbia, on Fisgard Island at the mouth of Esquimalt Harbour, is the site of Fisgard Lighthouse, the first lighthouse on the west coast of Canada.-History:...

 were built to safeguard the approaches to the Royal Navy base at Esquimalt.

An interesting screw-pile lighthouse was built at Sandheads off the mouth of the Fraser river in 1880; it was demolished in 1913 and replaced by a lightship. After building a long jetty to stabilize the channel location, in 1960 a new lighthouse was built at Sandheads.

Latter 19th century

The new Dominion of Canada undertook another round of lighthouse building following Confederation. The 1870s saw well over 100 new lighthouses go into operation; during this period Sable Island

Sable Island

Sable Island is a small Canadian island situated 300 km southeast of mainland Nova Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean. The island is a year-round home to approximately five people...

, "the graveyard of the Atlantic", and Bird Rock

Bird Rock

Bird Rock is a small granite island, with an area of about 1 ha, in south-eastern Australia. It is part of the Waterhouse Island Group, lying close to the north-eastern coast of Tasmania.-Fauna:...

, an outcrop of the Magdalen Islands

Magdalen Islands

The Magdalen Islands form a small archipelago in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with a land area of . Though closer to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, the islands form part of the Canadian province of Quebec....

 archipelago, were finally lit.

A great number of lighthouses built during the 19th century were tapering wooden towers, usually 4 or 8-sided. They had the advantage of being cheap to build, and in some cases could be relocated if the site was threatened by erosion. Surviving examples include Miscou Island

Miscou Island

Miscou Island is a Canadian island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence at the northeastern tip of Gloucester County, New Brunswick.It is separated from neighbouring Lamèque Island to the southwest by the Miscou Channel with both islands forming Miscou Harbour....

 and Mulholland Pointhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/jjcd7/2519330449/ (on Campobello Island) in New Brunswick, Margaretsville (NS), and Panmure Island, East Point, North Cape, West Point, Cape Bear, and Woods Island on Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...

.

Many of the towers from the 1870-1900 period were attached to the dwelling, for example Peases Island http://data2.archives.ca/ap/c/c086497.jpg and East Ironbound Island in Nova Scotia, Hope Island

Hope Island (Ontario)

Hope Island is the northern of three islands in south eastern Georgian Bay. It was named by Henry Bayfield after he surveyed it in the 19th century. Like its neighbour Christian Island, the uninhabited island is part of an Ojibwa reserve....

 in Georgian Bay, or the second lighthouse at Cap Gaspe in Quebec. Their ranks include a number of picturesque harbour or range lights such as Grande Anse in NB and New London rear range light in PEI.

Unfortunately there is a long list of wooden lighthouses which burned down, including the second one at Cape Ray

Cape Ray

Cape Ray is a headland located at the southwestern extremity of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador....

 in Newfoundland, the one on Ile Haute in the Bay of Fundy, Holland Rock in BC, and the one on remote Greenly Island, Canada

Greenly Island, Canada

Greenly Island is an island in Blanc-Sablon, Quebec, Canada, near the border of Newfoundland and Labrador, in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence at the southwestern end of Strait of Belle Isle. The rocky surface of Greenly Island has a thin cover of herbaceous vegetation...

 south of Labrador. The latter made headlines in 1928 when the German plane BREMEN crash landed there after making the first successful east-west transatlantic flight.

Colonel Anderson's Tenure, 1900-14

In the 1870s responsibility for navigational aids was transferred from the Department of Public Works to the Department of Marine and Fisheries. In 1904 the Department's Lighthouse Board was given a broader mission, and its dynamic chairman Colonel William P. Anderson

William P. Anderson

Colonel William Patrick Anderson was a Canadian civil engineer. He was Superintendent of Lighthouses for almost 40 years, and was responsible for many of the more notable lighthouses in Canada.-Early life and career:...

 planned an ambitious construction program. Various coastal beacons were upgraded from relector-type to state-of-the-art Fresnel lenses, manufactured by Barbier, Bénard & Turenne of Paris (:fr:BBT), or Chance Brothers

Chance Brothers

Chance Brothers and Company was a glassworks originally based in Spon Lane, Smethwick, West Midlands , in England. It was a leading glass manufacturer and a pioneer of British glassmaking technology....

 of Birmingham (UK). In order to lessen the dependence on such foreign suppliers, the Dominion Lighthouse Depot was established in a former starch factory at Prescott, Ontario

Prescott, Ontario

Prescott is a town of approximately 4,180 people on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Leeds and Grenville United Counties, Ontario, Canada. The Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge, 5 km east of Prescott in Johnstown, connects it with Ogdensburg, New York...

 in 1903. Numerous old wooden towers were replaced by reinforced concrete or prefabricated cast-iron towers, examples being Metis, Cap de la Madeleine, Cap Chat and Matane

Matane

Matane is a city in Quebec, Canada.Matane may also refer to:*Matane , Quebec*Matane Regional County Municipality, Quebec*Matane River, Quebec*Paulias Matane, Governor-General of Papua New Guinea...

 on the Gaspe peninsula

Gaspé Peninsula

The Gaspésie , or Gaspé Peninsula or the Gaspé, is a peninsula along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, extending into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence...

, Cape Croker on Georgian Bay, and Cape Race

Cape Race

Cape Race is a point of land located at the southeastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Its name is thought to come from the original Portuguese name for this cape, "Raso", or "bare"...

 in Newfoundland. The latter was perhaps the most important landfall beacon for North Atlantic traffic, and remains one of a handful of lighthouses in the world equipped with a giant hyperradiant Fresnel lens

Hyperradiant Fresnel lens

Hyper-radial or hyperradiant Fresnel lenses are Fresnel lenses larger than "first order" lenses. They have a focal length of 1330 mm. The idea was mentioned by Thomas Stevenson in 1869 and first proposed by John Richardson Wigham in 1872, and again proposed by Thomas Stevenson in 1885.The...

. It also boasted a new diaphone or compressed-air fog horn, a 1902 invention of Toronto's J.P. Northery Ltd. Click to download an audio clip (WAV format) of the diaphone foghorn in Duluth MN, or of the electric foghorn (RealAudio format) at Race Rocks, BC.

In 1904, the pre-fabricated cast-iron lighthouse at Fame Point, near Anse-a-Valleau on the Gaspe coast, became the first maritime wireless (Marconi) station in North America. In 1977, this lighthouse was dismantled and became a tourist attraction in Quebec City, but was scheduled to have been repatriated to its original site in late 1997.

To support the higher-order lenses (which floated in a bath of mercury), exposed ferro-concrete towers were sometimes buttressed, such as at Point Atkinson http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:W060326_lighthouse_park_023_adj.JPG in Lighthouse Park

Lighthouse Park

Lighthouse Park is a popular park in West Vancouver, Canada. Its area is about 75 hectares and it is almost completely covered with rugged, virgin rainforest. At the southermost tip of the peninsula is Point Atkinson with an impressive landmark lighthouse built in 1914 on granite boulders jutting...

 near Vancouver BC, Natashquan Point in Quebec, Ile Parisienne in Lake Superior, or at Langara and Sheringham Point on Vancouver Island. In 1910 one of these towers was built at the windswept summit of Triangle Island, 25 miles (40.2 km) off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. However, this turned out to be a costly blunder; at an elevation of 650 feet (198.1 m), the light was far too high to be visible in bad weather. After 10 years, the lantern was dismantled and brought back to the Coast Guard base in Victoria while the original plan of building a lighthouse at Cape Scott was carried out in 1927.

The art of building tall lighthouses using reinforced concrete reached its ultimate expression in the flying buttresses of Estevan Point

Estevan Point

Estevan Point is a lighthouse located on the headland of the same name on the Hesquiat Peninsula on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada....

 on the Pacific Coast, at Michipicoten Island

Michipicoten Island

Michipicoten Island is an island in Ontario, Canada, in the northeastern part of Lake Superior, approximately 175 km northwest of Sault Ste. Marie and 65 km southwest of Wawa, Ontario...

 and remote Caribou Island in Lake Superior, at Northeast Belle Isle

Belle Isle (Newfoundland and Labrador)

Belle Isle is an uninhabited island just off the coast of Labrador and north of Newfoundland at the Atlantic entrance to the Strait of Belle Isle which takes its name...

 in the Strait of Belle Isle, at Bagot Bluff on Anticosti Island, and at Pointe-au-Pere near Rimouski, Quebec. At 109 feet (33.2 m) the latter ranks with Point Amour as Canada's second-tallest lighthouse.

Some lighthouses from the early 1900s were of traditional 8-sided timber construction, such as at Point Riche near Port au Choix, Newfoundland, Henry Island in Cape Breton (NS), at La Martre, Quebec

La Martre, Quebec

La Martre is a municipality in the Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine region of the province of Quebec in Canada.The communities of Cap-au-Renard. Christie and Sainte-Marthe-de-Gaspé are included under this municipality....

 (site of a museum) on the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Lonely Island in Lake Huron, or at Pachena Point on Vancouver Island, site of the terrible 1906 shipwreck of the SS Valencia

SS Valencia

The SS Valencia was an iron-hulled passenger steamer wrecked off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia in 1906. Built in 1882 by William Cramp and Sons, she was a 1,598 ton vessel, 252 feet in length...

. However, the vast majority of post-1910 lighthouses replicated the octagonal pattern using the new ferro-concrete construction technique. Examples are Peggy's Cove and Western Island (NS), Cap Gaspe :File:Forillon National Park of Canada 4.jpg and Cap au Saumon (PQ), and Machias Seal Island

Machias Seal Island

Machias Seal Island is an island located in the Gulf of Maine, approximately southeast from Cutler, Maine, and approximately southwest of Southwest Head, New Brunswick on Grand Manan Island. Machias Seal Island is located at and measures approximately in area. It is a neighbour to North Rock....

 (NB). This style was carried to impressive height (102 feet) at Cape Sable Island (NS), Long Point in Lake Erie, and Great Duck Island in Lake Huron.

The ornate lighthouse at Point Abino near Fort Erie, Ontario

Fort Erie, Ontario

Fort Erie is a town on the Niagara River in the Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. It is located directly across the river from Buffalo, New York....

 dates from 1917. It was built as a memorial to the crew of the Buffalo-based US Lightship #82 which went down with all hands during the infamous Great Lakes Storm of 1913

Great Lakes Storm of 1913

The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, historically referred to as the "Big Blow", "Jeff Kinsland's Wash," the "Freshwater Fury" or the "White Hurricane", was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontario...

, which claimed a total of twelve ships and 235 lives.